No public funds for McCain

With the Republican presidential nomination within reach, John McCain is reshaping his campaign to press on without public financing that could limit his spring spending, senior advisers say.

The Arizona senator’s rejection of the presidential public financing program he once defended is just the latest evidence of how ineffective the post-Watergate reform has become in an era of multimillion-dollar candidacies.

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Under the public financing program, McCain could spend only about $54 million on all the primaries and caucuses — a sum Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton had spent before the first voters caucused in Iowa on Jan. 3.

Additionally, he faced a series of individual state spending caps — a system that Democrat John Edwards’ recently departed campaign demonstrated as meaningless because it is so fraught with loopholes and set-asides.

Consider this: For 2008, spending in Iowa was limited to about $1.5 million. Edwards spent $3.2 million on television alone to capture second place there and didn’t even come close to violating the federal spending cap rules.

Asked how much influence the spending caps had on campaign strategy, Edwards adviser Joe Trippi said: “Pretty much none.”

Trippi believes the way to salvage the system is for the Federal Election Commission and Congress to have a reality check and boost the overall spending cap to $90 million.

According to a report released Monday by the Center for Responsive Politics, this year’s presidential field raised and spent more money last year than in each election from 1976 through 2000. The totals: $583 million raised, $481 million spent.

A major reason for that is candidates are increasingly ducking the public financing system to avoid limits on spending. President Bush was the first to do that in 2000. This cycle, a candidate was hardly considered serious unless he or she had done so.

Boosting the overall spending limit of the public financing program would provide candidates who do accept public matching money with enough cash to compete in the primary and caucus states and protect themselves from attacks during the run-up to their nominating conventions, the official end date of the primary season.

Trippi isn’t bothered by the state spending caps, which have been watered down by a host of FEC rulings throughout the years. And a look at how the Edwards campaign operated in Iowa illustrates just how ineffective the rules have become.

First, the state limit itself is more fluid than one might think.

In Iowa, it was $1.49 million for 2008. But the FEC has ruled that about half of the money spent in Iowa — and any other state — would likely go to fundraising, an activity not covered by the spending limit. So the campaign really can spend about $3 million — as long as it drops a pitch for cash in some of its appeals.

Inside that $3 million, the campaigns don’t have to count the cost of producing television advertisements. They don’t have to count direct mail sent out 28 days before an election. And they don’t even have to count field organizers as part of their overall state spending total.

Then there are some apportionment rules that can make life much easier for the candidates.

Edwards’ year-end report, for instance, shows he spent nearly $300,000 on television in Nebraska in December, even though the state’s Democratic caucuses aren’t until this Saturday. Why? The Omaha television market reaches Iowans, and the campaign needs to count only the percentage of households in Iowa toward its total.

“You can spend considerable money in other markets and not move the dial a notch in terms of the cap,” Trippi said.